Uduaghan at 69: From Warri boy to statesman 

A statesman is someone who espouses and lives the virtue of integrity, fairness, forthrightness and ability to be counted on matters of public good. A statesman is someone who is development-minded, visionary, bold to dare, unflinching on moral grounds even to his or her hurt.

Such a person is not given to parochial partisan posturing, a true national icon and symbol of peace. The hallmark of all statesmen is that they see ahead of the crowd, they begin the journey where others stop; they are resilient, they don’t just win the battle, they also win the war.

This is where Emmanuel Uduaghan, a medical doctor and former Governor of Delta State, who turned 69 on Sunday, October 22, fits perfectly into the mould. As governor of Delta State from 2007 to 2015, he demonstrated most profoundly that he is a man who wants to be remembered more for his positive impact on humanity than being numbered among the crowd of once-upon-a-time leaders.

Without any doubt, Uduaghan had the longest-drawn legal battles with the opposition in his state. It is difficult to imagine any political office holder in Nigeria who has had to dash in and out of courtrooms and tribunals at the same dizzying frequency as Uduaghan did as governor.  Yet, while the legal tussle lasted, he maintained an enviable dignified calmness, a lesson for Nigerian politicians who would have seized the opportunity of incumbency to invoke fire on their traducers. Rather than hound those who haunted him, gentleman Uduaghan kept his cool and abided by all decisions of the court and tribunal at every stage. Ordinarily, such judicial intrusions and interjections would have slowed any leader down or even frustrated the person out of the path of development, but not Uduaghan. The litigations seemed to have added more spring to his heels. He kept his head down and focused on accomplishing his three-point agenda for the good of the people.

His associates describe him as a gentleman, soft yet firm. He is not garrulous and not one to make a remark before thinking. Unlike notable Nigerian politicians who dine and sup with the devil, spit fire and brimstone and manifest adroitness in the art of deceit and dissimulation, Uduaghan maintains an Olympian aloofness to vocal flippancy, chicanery and political tomfoolery. He is genteel, and would rather keep silence even to his own hurt. These are some of the character traits that qualify him as apolitical politician. A statesman does not lose his head even when others have all lost theirs. Uduaghan did exactly that: kept calm when the opposition in his state went wild with frivolous litigations, character assassination and raw brigandage.

All great statesmen all over the world were people who turned the weakness of their followers and admirers to strength, men who gave hope to the hopeless. Uduaghan became governor of Delta State at a time the issue of youth restiveness was at its peak. Militancy in the creeks of Niger Delta had snowballed from angry youths kidnapping a few expatriates in exchange for cash to youths blowing up oil pipelines, with hundreds dying from the ensuing inferno. Governors in the oil-rich region threw their hands up in frightening surrender, but a newly sworn in Uduaghan bucked the trend. Rather than join in the away-with-the-militants bandwagon, Uduaghan reached out to them and gainfully engaged them. It worked like magic. The same youths who had been restive and destructive became guardians of the nation’s economy. Today, the same youths are actively engaged in the security of the nation’s waterways, collaborating with relevant agencies of government to ensure the security of oil infrastructure in the region as well as the security of lives and property.

Uduaghan truly deserves commendation for his role in evolving a culture of peace in the region. Long before the Federal Government of the late Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua conceived the amnesty deal for the restive youths of the Niger Delta who had been wrongly tagged ‘militants’, Uduaghan had achieved relative peace in the creeks of Delta State. It took the persuasion of Uduaghan and other notable leaders of the area to get these youths to participate in the Federal Government amnesty.

At a time some governors of the various states of the region were busy shuttling between their states and Abuja to discredit the youths and curry favour with the powers that be in Aso Rock, Uduaghan waded through the slimy and perilous terrains of the creeks to seek out the youths and engage them in constructive discourses. This is the stuff of good leadership. A leader must always see himself or herself as an agent of service. He must not confer on himself the ruinous ego of superiority. A good leader must never cease to connect with the people. It is from connecting with them that you can empathise with them. Uduaghan deployed this time-tested leadership skill to reach out to the youths and it is from such interaction that he got to the very core of their grievances. He gave hope to the hopeless.

Great statesmen are strategic thinkers; they are visionary and possess a rare ability to see the future. Uduaghan manifested this in his concept of Delta Beyond Oil; an idea that has fully transformed to reality and has provided a compass for the socio-economic engineering of the state. The philosophy of Delta Beyond Oil is the engine driving development in Delta State till his day, development spanning the entire gamut of agriculture, entrepreneurship, healthcare delivery, human capital development with emphasis of qualitative education, skill acquisition, sports development among other aspects of human endeavour. Following his vision of Delta Beyond Oil, the Nigerian government, just like it did in the case of amnesty for Niger Delta youths, borrowed from the Uduaghan leadership book to kick-start the process of Nigeria Beyond Oil. Today, by hindsight, Uduaghan was prophetically right. Cash earnings from crude oil has waned significantly. Had successive Nigeria government at the centre maintained the tempo set by Uduaghan, the much-parroted diversification of the economy would have transcended beyond lip service to pragmatism.

Every statesman knows that without peace, there would be no development. And true statesmen never shy away from any opportunity to make peace if only to mock war. Uduaghan made several interventions to bring together warring parties in the nation’s socio-political space. One outstanding national intervention was his mediatory role as governor in persuading resident medical doctors to call off their strike and return to hospitals to continue with their noble duty of saving lives. It was not doctors in Delta State that were on strike but doctors all over the country. Whereas some politicians had latched on to the strike which stretched into the importation of Ebola virus into the country to slur the leadership reputation of the President Goodluck Jonathan, Uduaghan elected not to tread this ignoble path; rather he opted to play the role of a statesman by appealing to the doctors not to trade away the sacredness of the Hippocratic oath which they swore to: to strive to preserve life at all times.  It was not for nothing that doctors suspended the strike afterwards. Uduaghan saw the big picture of patients dying across the nation, not just in his Delta State on account of the strike and he stepped in to stave off danger.

Today, the world celebrates Lee Kuan Yew as the architect of modern Singapore. And, of course, he is. But many forget that what is today one of the fastest growing economies of the world was built from the ruins of war and the rubble of destruction. Yew saw the big picture of a prosperous Singapore and set out to birth a new nation from the ravages of underdevelopment. He set out big visions and big dreams for which he was even mocked by those who saw today what Yew saw decades ago. Uduaghan is a big dreamer, a man of vision. When he set out to build an airport of international standard in Asaba, he was mocked; he was chided and derided but he was unfazed. He stuck to his dream and in no time planted an airport in Asaba which both his yesterday mockers and admirers now use. The significance of that airport to the state’s economy can only be better appreciated when you compare the influx of individuals, corporate bodies, associations et al to Delta State before the airport was built and after.

Big dreams, they say, start small. In his big dream of a prosperous Delta State, Uduaghan in his time concentrically built the agriculture value chain in his state and revolutionised micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMSE) in Delta, making the state the ideal template in the country.

No man is born a statesman. All great statesmen grow into it usually against odds. Such men and women fought and won life’s many battles including the battle of the circumstance of birth. Uduaghan did. His dedication to service is exemplified by his humility and willingness to forego pleasure and bear the pain just to win freedom and dignity for mortal man. How else do you explain the wisdom of a sitting governor in Nigeria who had to forego his Senatorial ambition just for peace to reign in his state. In his time as governor, Delta State made history by becoming the first state in Nigeria to achieve kidney transplant. But that’s not the end of that feat. On the medical team that successfully carried out the kidney transplant was Governor Uduaghan himself: the zeal to serve compelled the medical doctor-turned politician to grab his stethoscope.

At 69 (he looks much younger than his age), Uduaghan, the Warri Boy (he proudly regales you with stories from his younger days in Warri) stands out as one of the most decorated political office holders in the nation’s annals, winning awards from notable institutions both in Nigeria and offshore. This is not for nothing: It is for the simple reason that he has refused to descend into the gutter of leadership infamy but chose to play the role of a true statesman in a nation replete with felons and delinquents in power. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Your Excellency, Dr. Emmanuel  Eweta Uduaghan, CON. Asamiagor!!!

• Ugbechie is Editor-in-Chief of Political Economist magazine and author of Nigeria Heroes and Sheroes